Aiden Pearce

Aiden Pearce (2 May 1974-) was an Irish-American grey hat hacker and vigilante from Chicago, Illinois who was affiliated with the hacktivist group DedSec.

Biography
Aiden Pearce was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 2 May 1974 to an Irish Catholic family. His mother took him and his sister Nicole to the United States to escape their abusive father, and the family settled in Chicago, Illinois. Pearce grew up in a rough neighborhood, and he spent much of his youth learning about computers. As an adult, he committed clandestine scams, and he also ran with a gang, paying them to teach him how to use firearms. He later became acquainted with fellow hacker Damien Brenks and became his partner in crime, teaching each other specific hacking skills and becoming an effective team. In October 2012, they attempted to hack into the Merlaut Hotel (owned by Irish Mob boss Dermot Quinn) and electronically siphon money out of the wealthy guests' bank accounts, but Quinn discovered the hacking and feared that they were seeking to steal his blackmail tape on Mayor Donovan Rushmore. Quinn hired the hitman Manuel Vega to murder Aiden and Dermot, who cut their ties to each other and went into hiding. Vega shot the tire of Pearce's SUV while he was taking his family on a "surprise trip" to the country (hoping to keep them safe in Rockford), causing Pearce to lose control of the vehicle as it struck a pillar; Pearce's niece Lena was killed in the ensuing crash. Pearce came to suffer from PTSD and paranoia, keeping his family under surveillance and swearing vengenace against his niece's killers.

In September 2013, Pearce tracked Vega down to May Stadium in the Parker Square district on the West Side, but Vega refused to cooperate with him, leading to Pearce leaving Vega in the hands of his partner Jordi Chin. Later, Brenks reached out to Pearce and asked him to help him search for the other hacker who ruined the Merlaut Hotel heist; when Pearce refused, Brenks kidnapped Pearce's sister and forced him to comply. With the help of DedSec hacker Clara Lille, he tracked down the second hacker, Black Viceroys gang leader Delford Wade. He stole information from Wade's servers and discovered that Wade had information on almost every citizen in Chicago, blackmailing the law into turning a blind eye towards his gang. Lille later introduced Pearce to the more knowledgeable hacker Raymond Kenney, who helped Pearce decrypt some of the stolen data. Pearce assaulted Wade's compound before downloading its server data, and he killed Wade in the process. JB Markowicz stole Pearce's information and deleted it from his servers, informing him that Lille had helped with locating Pearce and Brenks during the Merlaut job; Pearce told Lille to leave and then - with the help of Kenney - confronted Markowicz and retrieved the stolen data.

Pearce then rescued his sister and drove her to Rockford, where she went into hiding, and Kenney soon tracked down Dermot Quinn, but not before Quinn killed a guilt-ridden Clara Lille at Lena's grave. Pearce confronted Quinn and shut off his pacemaker with a hack; in his last moments, Quinn revealed the true motive behind his ordering the hit on Pearce and Brenks. Pearce uploaded the incriminating video of Mayor Rushmore accidentally murdering his secretary Rose Washington in an argument about Rushmore's links to Quinn, driving the Mayor to commit suicide. Pearce proceeded to search for Brenks, hacking the city's ctOS system and injecting it with a virus in order to cause a citywide blackout. Pearce tracked Brenks down to a lighthouse, where he wounded Jordi Chin and confronted and killed Brenks. Chin then told Pearce where he was keeping Vega, and Pearce killed Vega, avenging his niece.

In 2014, Aiden escaped to St. Louis, Missouri to live with his sister and nephew. That same year, he headed to San Francisco to help shut down a human trafficking ring run by the Bratva and the Triads, and he was captured in the process. He was rescued by hacker Marcus Holloway, and he started a miniature blackout before escaping.